On Monday, tribunals were forgotten with the opening in Dublin Castle of the Chester Beatty Library and Galleries in the refurbished Clock Tower building. Tibetan prayer wheels, ancient papyrus, painted scrolls, illuminated Korans, tiny Chinese snuff boxes, hand-written books of Persian poetry, and gold-edged manuscripts by the score glinted under their glass cases.
Archbishop Jorge Meija, a librarian in the Vatican, who had come over from Rome especially for the occasion, was clearly impressed. "I wish we could exhibit the books in our library as well as this," he declared. London-based Lady Charlotte Fraser, a great-granddaughter of Chester Beatty, was representing the family. "When all these things were in Shrewsbury Road, they felt more as if they were a private collection, but now they're here in Dublin Castle, they're truly part of the Irish heritage, which is what my greatgrandfather always wanted," she said.
Marie Donnelly, who directed the Whoseday Book project with such success, is a trustee of the new CBL. After Whoseday, what's next? "A visualbased project - but not on the grand scale of the last one," is all she's giving away at this stage.
Derick Dreher, the director of the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, will be lending the Chester Beatty some 60 pages of Joyce's hand-written manuscript of Ulysses in June. "His handwriting is miserable," Dreher confided.
Artist Finbar Kelly has been helping to transfer the artefacts from Shrewsbury Road to their new home for the past couple of months. "Now it's time to go back to my studio in Pigeon House and start painting again."
Since Minister Sile de Valera had been struck down by flu, Eamon O Cuiv stepped in. The other speakers were Dr Tom Hardiman, chairman of the CBL, and Dr Michael Ryan, the library's director. Among the many other guests present were politicians Michael D. Higgins and Ruairi Quinn; the attorney general Michael McDowell; businessman Dermot Desmond; and Evanna McGilligan, who worked in the Shrewsbury Road library for many years and remembers Chester Beatty well.
